He's defied expectations as a starter so far, and proven a lot of posters here wrong in the process. I hope that continues.

He’s defied the majority of posters for sure, but not the brewers, who knew going into the year he had a starters arsenal and would likely flourish if given the opportunity to start. This team doesn’t need to spend 30 million a year on an Ace, they already have one budding in Woodruff and a solid #3 in Houser, with the stuff and command of a #2 potentially moving forward. Tired of the “this team can’t develop TOR starting pitching” talk. It’s already happening as we speak.

He's defied expectations as a starter so far, and proven a lot of posters here wrong in the process. I hope that continues.

He’s defied the majority of posters for sure, but not the brewers, who knew going into the year he had a starters arsenal and would likely flourish if given the opportunity to start. This team doesn’t need to spend 30 million a year on an Ace, they already have one budding in Woodruff and a solid #3 in Houser, with the stuff and command of a #2 potentially moving forward. Tired of the “this team can’t develop TOR starting pitching” talk. It’s already happening as we speak.

Houser has a higher ceiling. His stuff is a little better than woodruff's.

He's defied expectations as a starter so far, and proven a lot of posters here wrong in the process. I hope that continues.

He’s defied the majority of posters for sure, but not the brewers, who knew going into the year he had a starters arsenal and would likely flourish if given the opportunity to start. This team doesn’t need to spend 30 million a year on an Ace, they already have one budding in Woodruff and a solid #3 in Houser, with the stuff and command of a #2 potentially moving forward. Tired of the “this team can’t develop TOR starting pitching” talk. It’s already happening as we speak.

To be fair, Houser was developed as a starter in the Astros organization. He was already in AA and angling for a AAA call-up when dealt to the Brewers. The Brewers did do a solid job seeing him through his TJ rehab.

Houser seems to have the rare ability to both get strikeouts and ground balls. Normally the two don't go very well together. In fact among pitchers with 80+ IP (Houser has 82), Houser is 39th in K/9 ratio with 9.33. Not one of the pitchers ahead of him has a higher groundball rate (Though Castillo is off by only 0.3%). You have to go down to spot 117, Dakota Hudson, to find someone with a higher GB%, and he is in fact the only pitcher with 80+ IP who has a higher GB% than Houser. Even when lowering the treshold to 40 IP, there are still only 4 relievers (Luke Jackson, Joe Kelly, Diego Castillo, Jace Fry) with a higher K/9 and GB% than Houser.

So while 82 IP isn't really a lot, it's still encouraging to see. Having both the ability to strike batters out and induce double plays goes a long way towards minimizing damage from baserunners.

Much like Woodruff I think Houser is a pretty safe bet to be a quality rotation arm. Too good of a fastball and secondary pitches to not be. How good of one? Well, guess we will see how well he can locate and utilize his pitches.

They could get swept and potentially be like 3 games out of the wild card with 29 to play. This isn't must-win territory. The deck is really stacked against them regardless and this staff appears more incapable of stringing together a hot streak the longer the season goes. But this isn't must win.

They could get swept and potentially be like 3 games out of the wild card with 29 to play. This isn't must-win territory. The deck is really stacked against them regardless and this staff appears more incapable of stringing together a hot streak the longer the season goes. But this isn't must win.

Or they could get swept and be 4.5 games out of the WC2 with 3-4 teams ahead of them for that last WC spot.

Which still wouldn't make this game a must-win, a phrase I've used to describe "today's" game at about 60 different points in the year.

I mean by definition the last "must-win" games were Game 6 and 7 of the NLCS. But they're looking up at a lot more teams for the WC than they are the division and are nearing the territory where they'll need a September like last year to squeak in. And this team just isn't good enough for that kind of September again.

So at some point they do need to start putting together some sort of 8 out of 9 stretch or something like that, and they're running out of time for it.

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